Current Exhibition-
Martha McDonald: The Wood is Singing in Color

September 14, 2023 – December 30, 2023

This fall, WEM’s 2023 Artist-in-Residence Martha McDonald will stage a new live performance, The Wood is Singing in Color, based on her deep research into the museum’s collections and archives. Over the past eight months, McDonald has brought her singular interdisciplinary approach, which creatively responds to collections and histories, to our site. The Wood is Singing in Color marks the first time WEM’s Artist-in-Residence program has culminated in a live performance. The piece will be staged eight times over a series of two weekends in the 1956 Workshop designed by Esherick, Louis I. Kahn, and Anne Tyng.

Photograph by Brooke Sietinsons

Watch Craft in America episode, HOME, featuring the Wharton Esherick Museum

HOME visits artists whose environments are filled with meaning and metaphor. It features Syd Carpenter, Helen Drutt, Wharton Esherick, Biskakone Greg Johnson, North House Folk School, and Sim Van de Ryn.

Stream the episode online here!

Watch our Spotlight Talk: Filming with Craft in America

“If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing”  –Wharton Esherick

The Wharton Esherick Museum celebrates and preserves the legacy of American artist Wharton Esherick, who worked primarily in wood to create furniture, furnishings, utensils, interiors, buildings and more.

A National Historic Landmark for Architecture, his hilltop studio/residence, with more than 300 of his works on exhibition, has been preserved much as it was when the artist lived and worked there.

We invite you to visit the Museum through a guided experience for which reservations are required.

LEARN MORE

“A complete expression of one man’s intensely personal fusion of fine craftsmanship with the wild flights of the imagination.”

Anne d'Harnoncourt, former director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

“Fun, neat, creative, colorful, comfortable, smooth, flowing, exciting, cool, twisty, wavy, and extraordinary.”

Second graders describe their visit to the Wharton Esherick Museum

OPEN CALL

Imprint 2024:

16th Annual High School Printmaking Exhibition

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Your support keeps Esherick’s legacy thriving, and preserves his joyful, handcrafted Studio for generations to come.